"The container was welded to the trailer. And that's not how containers get shipped. They get lifted off and put on boats. By cranes. That's the whole point of containers. The welding suggests they don't mean for that container to leave the country."
Vaughan's phone rang. A three-minute wait. From a cop's perspective, the upside of all the Homeland Security hoopla. Agencies talked, computers were linked, databases were shared. She answered and listened, four long minutes. Then she thanked her caller and clicked off.
"Can't rule out the AWOL involvement," she said.
"Because?" Reacher asked.
"They're listed as activists. And activists can be into all kinds of things."
"What kind of activists?"
"Religious conservatives."
"What kind?"
"They run something called the Church of the Apocalypse in LA."
"The Apocalypse is a part of the End Times story," Reacher said.
Vaughan said nothing.
Reacher said, "Maybe they came here to recruit Thurman as a brother activist. Maybe they recognized his special potential."
"They wouldn't have stayed in this hotel. They'd have been guests in his house."
"Not the first time. He didn't know them yet. The second time, maybe. And the third and the fourth, maybe the fifth and the sixth. Depends how hard they had to work to convince him. There's a four-month gap between their first visit and when he ordered the TNT from Kearny."
"He said that was a bureaucratic error."
"Did you believe him?"
Vaughan didn't answer.
"Four phone calls," Reacher said. "That's all it's going to take."
They drove west to the edge of town. Three miles away through the rainy darkness they could see the plant's lights, faint and blue and distant, blurred by the rain on the windshield, a fragmented sepulchral glow way out in the middle of nowhere. Empty space all around it. They parked on a curb facing out of town, level with the last of the buildings. Reacher eased his butt off the seat and took the cell phone he had borrowed out of his pocket. Then he took out the sheet of paper he had taken from the purchasing office. The new cell phone numbers. The paper was wet and soggy and he had to peel apart the folds very carefully.
"Ready?" he asked.
Vaughan said, "I don't understand."
He dialed the third number down. Heard ring tone in his ear, twice, four times, six times, eight. Then the call was answered. A muttered greeting, in a voice he recognized. A man's voice, fairly normal in tone and timbre, but a little dazed, and muffled twice, first by coming from a huge chest cavity, and again by the cellular circuitry.
The big guy, from the plant.
Reacher said, "How are you? Been awake long?"
The guy said, "Go to hell."
Reacher said, "Maybe I will, maybe I won't. I'm not sure about the likelihood of things like that. You guys are the theologians, not me."
No reply.
Reacher asked, "Is your buddy awake, too?"
No reply.
Reacher said, "I'll call him and see for myself."
He clicked off and dialed the second number on the list. It rang eight times and the plant foreman answered.
Reacher said, "Sorry, wrong number."
He clicked off.
Vaughan asked, "What exactly are you doing?"
"How did the insurgents hurt David?"
"With a roadside bomb."
"Detonated how?"
"Remotely, I assume."
Reacher nodded. "Probably by radio, from the nearest ridge line. So if Thurmanhas built a bomb, how will he detonate it?"
"The same way."
"But not from the nearest hill. He'll probably want a lot more distance than that. He'll probably want to be out of state somewhere. Maybe at home here in Colorado, or in his damn church. Which would take a very powerful radio. In fact, he'd probably have to build one himself, to be sure of reliability. Which is a lot of work. So my guess is he decided to use one that someone else already built. Someone like Verizon or T-Mobile or Cingular."
"Cell phone?"
Reacher nodded again. "It's the best way. The phone companies spend a lot of time and money building reliable networks. Look at their commercials. They're proud of the fact that you can call anywhere from anywhere. Some of them even give you free long distance."
"And the number is on that list?"
"It would make sense," Reacher said. "Two things happened at the same time, three months ago. Thurman ordered twenty tons of TNT, and four new cell phones. Sounds like a plan to me. He already had everything else he needed. My guess is he kept one phone for himself, and gave two to his inner circle, so they could have secure communications between themselves, separate from anything else they were doing. And my guess is the fourth phone is buried in the heart of that container, with the ringer wired to a primer circuit. The ringer on a cell phone puts out a decent little voltage. Maybe they fitted a standby battery, and maybe they connected an external antenna. Maybe one of those antennas on the Peterbilt was a cell antenna from Radio Shack, wired back to the trailer."
"And you're going to call that number?"
Reacher said, "Soon."
He dialed the first number on the list. It rang, and then Thurman answered, fast and impatient, like he had been waiting for the call. Reacher asked, "You guys over the wall yet?"
Thurman said, "We're still here. Why are you calling us?"
"You starting to see a pattern?"
"The last phone was Underwood's. He's dead, so he won't answer. So there's no point calling it."
Reacher said, "OK."
"How long are you going to keep us here?"
"Just a minute more," Reacher said. He clicked off and laid the phone on the Chevy's dash. Stared out through the windshield.
Vaughan said, "You can't do this. It would be murder."
Reacher said, "Live by the sword, die by the sword. Thurman should know that quotation better than anyone. It's from the Bible. Matthew, chapter twenty-six, verse fifty-two. Slightly paraphrased. Also, they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. Hosea, chapter eight, verse seven. I'm sick of people who claim to live by the scriptures cherry-picking the parts they find convenient, and ignoring all the rest."
"You could be completely wrong about him."
"Then there's no problem. Gifts don't explode. We've got nothing to lose."
"But you might be right."
"In which case he shouldn't have lied to me. He should have confessed. I would have let him take his chance in court."
"I don't believe you."
"We'll never know now."
"He doesn't seem worried enough."
"He's used to saying things and having people believe him. And he told me he's not afraid of dying. He told me he's going to a better place."
"You're not a one-man justice department."
"He's no better than whoever blew up David's Humvee. Worse, even. David was a combatant, at least. And out on the open road. Thurman is going to have that thing driven to a city somewhere. With children and old people all around. Thousands of them. And more thousands maybe not quite close enough. He's going to put thousands more people in your situation."
Vaughan said nothing.
"And for what?" Reacher said. "For some stupid, deluded fantasy."
Vaughan said nothing.
Reacher checked the final number. Entered it into his phone. Held the phone flat on his palm and held it out to Vaughan.